Image Gallery:
Restoration treatment of a rare book - The Taxidermist's Manual

This book is from the museum's Research Library's Rare Book collection. It was published in 1850, New York, USA and is the revised American edition of the English publication "The Taxidermist's Manual". It had previously been inappropriately re-covered with a blue plastic material and the original covers discarded. It also had been poorly rebound in a stab binding stitching that prevented the pages from opening freely and fully with out causing stress and damage to the spine and pages. The paper itself is brittle and fragile, there is a degraded sticky tape repair to a tear in the title page. There are major losses to various pages and extensive staining. Given this poor condition and inappropriate repairs that were causing damage to the book's binding structure and paper, it was decided to completely take apart the binding and carry out multiple conservation treatments to restore the book. The following images show the book's condition before and after conservation restoration treatments.